Since the new “Recommended for You” sort came out today, the Top Rated sort has been moved from the second row of the games page, where it has stayed for years, to the fifth row. Although this seems like a small issue, many players actually do not scroll beyond the first 3 rows.The visibility a game receives for being on Top Rated has been ruined.
Moving down Top Rated has the following negative effects:
Developers have a much smaller incentive to pursue very high ratings for their game as the increase in users they get from the sort is much smaller.
Paid access games, small showcases, and other niche games that traditionally relied on Top Rated for visibility have been buried.
Players who have gotten used to Top Rated being at the second row for years are now confused where the sort is.
To better see how the change has affected games that rely on Top Rated for visibility, here’s a chart of Lawn Mowing Simulator’s user count in the past 3 days (credits to Blade). The game has lost almost 40% of its users after the change in just one day.
Currently, Top Rated is placed below even the “10 Robux VIP Servers” and “Learn and Explore” sorts which are arguably far less important to developers and players than the Top Rated sort.
I would like to request that the Top Rated page be moved back to it’s original place in the second row or at the very least in the third row.
I can’t see Top Rated being put above Recommended for You any time soon. If Roblox wants to keep players on the platform, personalized game sorts are needed more than a “one size fits all sort” sort (A 'One Size Fits All' Games Page is No Solution to the Problem of Game Discovery on Roblox). In order to keep players on the platform, players need to see games that are related to what Roblox thinks is their interests. This success has been seen on platforms like YouTube where you get videos related to what you watch and subscribe to. The Top Rated sort helps makes large, monolithic games exist, while personalized sorts help smaller, more-involved communities of players with broader games exist.
I think Recommended for You is a great idea, but at the same time I feel there needs to be a balance between sorts where the criteria can manually be influenced (Popular, Top Rated) and those that are personalized. Otherwise developers would be too subject to the whims of the algorithm responsible for personalization much like Youtubers currently are.
In regards to “large, monolithic games”, the Popular sort is much more responsible than Top Rated. Personally I think Recommended for You deserves a spot in the top 3 rows, and that Top Rated also deserves one of the spots. At the very least it should be above “10 Robux VIP Servers”.
Customizing the sort isn’t a bad idea, but it is a band-aid solution that may mask a much larger problem. The underlying problem with the games page right now is that whenever Roblox needs to push a new initiative, they slap on a new sort to the games page, often times without regards to the older sorts. The current game page has 20 sorts, many of which players will never bother to look through.
Rather than allowing players to customize the mess Roblox has made themselves, there needs to be a complete overhaul as to how the page is handled. This begins with
Removing the vast majority of sorts on the page
Keeping a tight control on which new sorts can be added
Adding a genre filter
The only important sorts (feel free to disagree) I see are Popular, Top Rated, Recommended for You, and Up and Coming. Remove everything else, add a genre filter for the remaining sorts, and you already have a major improvement to game discovery.
